The Cooperative Work Agency (CWA) was launched towards the end of 2017, following the approval of the Law on Cooperative. It was established to fulfil two major roles:

• Legal role/function covering the registration, financial and administrative audit of cooperatives, and other regulatory procedures such as liquidation of cooperatives and investigation into cooperative financial/administrative issues. This role is currently active.
• Promoting and supporting the development of cooperatives through education/awareness raising (to be institutionalized through the Cooperative Development Institute) as well as facilitating cooperative access to funding and capacity building in the area of business planning (to be institutionalised through the Cooperative Development Fund). These will take some time to fully operationalize.

The strategic objectives of CWA as spelled out in the 2017-22 Strategy are as follows: build an institutional environment that enables the cooperative movement to grow and develop, improve the financial and organizational performance of cooperatives, and expand cooperative sectors/areas to include new tapes/modalities of cooperation. You can find out more about CWA by visiting their website-  www.cwa.pna.ps

The ICA-AP region now has 109 from 32 countries.